Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Target (TGT) plans to market its fall and winter designer apparel in a strange fashion show. Clothes and accessories will dance and prance their way down the runway without models and without actual clothing.

Instead of models or the clothing they are trying to sell, Target will stage the fashion show using holograms, two-dimensional moving images that give the illusion of having three dimensions. They will be projected in a section of Grand Central Terminal in New York City on Nov. 6 and 7 and will be repeated every 10 minutes from noon to midnight the first day and 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. the second day. Target plans to post a video of the show on Google's (GOOG) YouTube, Facebook and Target's own Web site to get more eyeballs on it.

Even Target acknowledges it is a risk. "I hope it won't creep people out," Said Laura Sandall, Target's director of events marketing and publicity.

It won't creep them out but it will be worse, ineffective. Clothing is a "visual and touchy feely" purchase for the vast majority of people and what Target is doing is taking that away from them. Folks need to see what it will look like on someone to be intrigued and "want to look like the model" in the cloths. Watching a virtual pair of pants dance across a screen won't do much to satiate the basic needs people have to be propelled them to buy clothing. In order to keep folks attention the clothing must end up doing something exciting which will then restrict the ability of people to actually make a judgment on the item. Who wants to buy but they can't see?

Target will save a bunch not paying models and actually using cloths but when compared to what they may actually end up selling from the promo, it may end up costing them dearly as the holiday season, make or break for most retailers is a very risky time to be trying such a daring, unproven and admittedly "odd" strategy.

Watching pants dance will not spur a buying decision for people... not in the numbers they need to prevent Q4 from being a bust..

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